Monthly Archives: December 2014

Starbucks iconic mermaid is also mysterious. Who is she? And does she have a secret life? Korean artist Soo Min Kim not only imagined, but created makeovers with markers or paints right on the cups themselves. His fun Starbucks mermaid art has the character in all sorts of roles!

She might have a mundane working life, fetching coffee in the office or enduring subway train crushes during the rush hour. She might also be riding the elevator or even just chatting on the phone! Or she might even be moonlighting as a burglar in the night!

The mermaid also has secret lives as a superhero or a transformer robot. His work is delightful, making us look at ordinary objects like these cups with fresh eyes and leaving us with a smile or two!

We generally recommend scanning old photographs (and documents) yourself using our Modahaus steady stands. This is the most economical and private way to digitize physical prints. You can prioritize and work on the conversions over time.

Simon Pyle is a Californian based artist who has taken photography into new artistic directions. His concrete art print photography uses found concrete slabs as the canvas. The unusual backdrop gives his work an edgy look, amplified by the cityscape images on the rough hewn slabs.

Just a couple of decades ago, we would have to haul a cartful of equipment to have what we have now in just a smartphone or a tablet. Today, it is all about portability. Need a bigger keyboard for your mobile devices when you are away from your main computer? Forget those simple folding ones. Check out the Epic from Celluon, a palm size portable laser projection keyboard.

One of the most challenging projects an artist can do is to create something following a theme for 365 days. Cape Town based artist, Lorraine Loots, began her unique challenge of painting tiny pictures for every single day of 2013. She said, “The project evolved and people started booking sentimental dates making suggestions for the painting to be done on that day. Every day, I posted the completed picture online, and unsold pieces could be reserved by commenting on the picture.”

Those paintings were exhibited in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa in January 2014 before going to their owners. She decided to continue with the project in 2014. But this time the paintings will be Cape Town themed. That is because the city was designated as World Design Capital this year. This time round, additional postcards will also be available for sale besides the original paintings.

Her collection is aptly named, “Postcards for Ants”. They are all tiny as you can see from this selection of photographs from the artist’s Instagram. The macro images show different objects such as brushes, palettes, pencils, coins, ear buds and even the artist’s fingers artfully arranged to demonstrate scale. They are all exquisite!

There are all kinds of services out there to help you create art decor using your own images. But Collage Mo takes it one step further. The free iOS app lets you collate a set of photos from any of their template designs. The templates range from simple 4 panel designs up to 15 panel ones. The images from your camera roll or even Facebook and Instagram accounts are simply loaded one by one by tapping on the empty spaces of the chosen template.

It is not often we get to see some amazing mini art sculptures. Working and photographing in macro scale is not easy. Recep Alçamlı, a young Turkish chemical engineering student rises to the challenge. When he is not studying or pursuing his outdoor passions like cycling, he carves and photographs graphite pencil miniatures.

If you have old photographs from the pre-digital era lying around in boxes, they run the risk of being misplaced and lost. The Heirloom app will help you digitize old photographs quick as snap from smartphones. No scanners are needed as your smartphone does all the work.

With a name like Milne which rhymes with kiln, you could say Seattle based Carol Milne was born to be a glass artist. HEr work includes extraordinary knitted glass sculptures – beautiful and intriguing at the same time. Just how does she manipulate molten glass into such yarn like intricacies?